So the show itself was dreadful. It was embarrassing watching 1) Anthony Bourdain pretending to love being on a game show, 2) Nigella pretending that her team of "home cooks" weren't out of their league, and 3) Ludo gluing himself to his PYT amateur girl to the exclusion of the better male cooks on his team. Oh, I should say something snarky about Malarky? Okay, his pants.

But though that's just my opinion, I must be in good company because the finale drew the fewest viewers of any of their eight episodes, and ABC (per Eater.com) didn't even bother pelting critics or the public with the usual PR blitz in anticipation of that episode.

If Tony's still blogging, he should soon have some interesting things to say about why it didn't work that will be a whole lot more entertaining than the show itself!

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

I won't miss it. It never got off the ground for me. I really didn't understand the concept. And, why only a spoonful of food? Too ridiculous for words.

"...To undersalt deliberately in the name of dietary chic is to omit from the music of cookery the indispensable bass line over which all tastes and smells form their harmonies." -- Robert Farrar Capon

Karen/NoCA wrote:I did not get the spoonful of food either, the whole show just seemed silly.

Actually, that was the least of their problems from my point of view. There just wasn't enough to build a show out of and the silly props they used (the booths, the lights, the buzzers) to create drama ate up time in all the wrong ways. Compared to Top Chef, it was like building mole hills next to skyscrapers.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

Karen/NoCA wrote:Same here and I wondered what appealed to him about the show, that he agreed to participate.

Oh, it's worse than that. He and Nigella were the executive producers!

He does have a new travel show for CNN starting in April.

I didn't realize that! Tony - fail!

Didn't know either of the other guys, one French twit, one non French twit. Nigella is nice to look at in a Rubenesque sort of way, but she isn't a great chef. Of course neither is Tony - the attraction there is his story telling, not his actual cooking.

What I would have liked was for them to have run the judges through a round of competition. That would have been informative!

Didn't know either of the other guys, one French twit, one non French twit. Nigella is nice to look at in a Rubenesque sort of way, but she isn't a great chef. Of course neither is Tony - the attraction there is his story telling, not his actual cooking.

What I would have liked was for them to have run the judges through a round of competition. That would have been informative!

The French Twit, Ludo, opened a much lauded restaurant in Los Angeles in the early 2000's called Bastide and closed it not that many years later, for reasons I don't understand. Then he started popping up here and there in empty restaurant spaces, either starting or outdoing others at the concept of pop-up restaurants--not sure which is true, but he did a season of TV shows where he and his entertainment lawyer wife went to various cities around the U.S. and opened a pop-up restaurant wherein the 'fun' part was supposed to be his Ramsey-esque profane yelling at the staff. I watched two episodes; the tantrums made it highly formulaic and boring. Brian Malarky was a contestant on Top Chef a few seasons ago, I otherwise know nothing more than the bio they gave on The Taste.

I didn't go into watching this dumb show with any love for Nigella having seen but one episode of her show in my life, but I presumed she had better cooking chops than this show revealed her to have. I googled her the other day to find out a bit more, and was stunned to learn how stinking rich she and her husband are. And she herself comes from pretty good stock, her father having been a Chancellor of the Exchequer (sp?). Why is she bothering to do TV shows?

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

Bill Spohn wrote:I didn't go into watching this dumb show with any love for Nigella, having seen but one episode of her show in my life, but I presumed she had better cooking chops than this show revealed her to have. I googled her the other day to find out a bit more, and was stunned to learn how stinking rich she and her husband are. And she herself comes from pretty good stock, her father having been a Chancellor of the Exchequer (sp?). Why is she bothering to do TV shows?

Even the idle rich seek amusement....sadly, I can't offer first hand evidence.

Nigella is not a trained chef. She is a food writer and restaurant critic, so while she may be a good food judge, she has never really 'walked the walk', just 'talked the talk'.

One doesn't have to be a trained chef to have serious chops. Nigella just seemed deliberately and phonily unsophisticated in her emphasis on home cooks--a shtick that didn't work. Especially when one knows she's married to Charles Saatchi.

Malarky--I thought he was the most fun and least put-on of all the judges. But then I saw him on Top Chef, and remember his enthusiasm and fun beach boy demeanor from that. Was surprised from learning on this show that he's gone on to establish a little empire in San Diego. That didn't exist so far as I recall, pre-Top Chef. In fact, I thought he worked in Florida then.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

I thought the show didn't work on many levels, but he one that got me was the spoonful of food, literally a "taste" of something. It was too much when I saw someone trying to pile a sandwich on a spoon, and another episode a lamb chop or pork butt or something else silly!! The whole premise just seemed too ridiculous. Nigella is a cross between Sandra Lee and Paula Deen in my book. Not that either of those is bad (well....), but they are just not chefs. I saw a show where Tony went back into the kitchen at el Bulli (I believe) to prepare a chef's only dinner. He didn't do so well as I recall, so I have questions about his cooking chops as well. I find him entertaining, in a way that boorish people are entertaining at first, then you tire of them quickly, because the conversation is always from their perspective, while they dismiss other points of view with a sneer and a snicker. The unnecessary tantrums on the part of Ludo, and the tit-n-tat between him and Malarkey, Tony's "I've had much better in the hinterlands of Cambodia" attitude toward any dish Asian, and Nigella's unwavering support of her team of some of the worst cooks I've ever seen on tv, made the show a real stinker for me. I don't think I sat through an entire episode of one show. Good riddance.

"...To undersalt deliberately in the name of dietary chic is to omit from the music of cookery the indispensable bass line over which all tastes and smells form their harmonies." -- Robert Farrar Capon

Jo Ann Henderson wrote: I saw a show where Tony went back into the kitchen at el Bulli (I believe) to prepare a chef's only dinner. He didn't do so well as I recall, so I have questions about his cooking chops as well.

On No Reservations he's admitted that he's been out of the kitchen a long time and was never that great a chef anyway. He's probably a better writer/observor than anything else, and I'd accept him as a judge or critic in the way he's been on Top Chef--astute and frank. Snarky, sure, but never undeserved; he just didn't edit himself the way most do.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov